The invention relates to a fender system comprising at least one absorbing body of an elastomer material, which can be secured directly or indirectly to a quay or a jetty, and a front plate, which is parallel in essentially a vertical plane to the plane of the quay or the jetty, and is provided at the other side of the absorbing body, with a front plate which can come into touch with an object such as a ship moving towards the front plate, the front plate serving for distributing and transferring the loads exerted by this object on the absorbing body.
Such fender systems are used on a large scale for mooring ships, in order to prevent the quay, the jetty or the ship concerned from being damaged.
With these known fender systems the front plate consists in general of a steel construction, built up of a number of profiles welded to one another. When the absorbing body of the fender system consists of a hollow cylindrical body, of which the centre line is at a right angle to the plane of the front plate, the rear side of the front plate consisting of the steel construction can be secured e.g. by means of bolts, to a flange plate, which may be one whole with the absorbing body, or the front plate may lie against the absorbing body in a different force-transferring manner. A connection by means of bolts can be used also with other embodiments of the absorbing body.
It is possible to connect the steel construction e.g. by means of chains with the quay or the jetty, in such a way that within certain limits the front plate can move with respect to the quay or the jetty when transferring the forces exerted on the front plate to the absorbing body.
Also in the case that the front plate is connected through the absorbing body with the quay or the jetty, some chains may be provided between the front plate and the quay or the jetty, in such a way that the absorbing body can be relieved from the weight of the front plate, whereas on the other hand the movement of the front plate in the horizontal direction and thereby the deformation of the absorbing body can be limited.
The manufacture of the front plate described above requires a great amount of labour, as the profiles must be cut to size, welded to one another, provided with fastening points for the chains and possible other parts, etc. It will not always be possible to provide the fastening points for the chains at the best possible place, because of the position of the profiles.
As such a front plate will be exposed to a high extent to the effects of air and water, there will be a major risk of corrosion of such a front plate consisting of a steel construction. The front plate must be protected against this corrosion by means of metallization or painting, and after a certain service time an inspection of the steel construction will have to take place in order to see whether it still meets the requirements.